Underground Gas Tank Fire in Springs a 'Teachable Moment' for All

An underground propane tank that sprung a leak and then ignited behind a Springs home on Saturday — sending flames shooting high into the air — presented firefighters with a rare, confounding and dangerous situation.

The fire burst forth late on Saturday morning, July 22, from a tank buried behind a Clinton Street home, sending a tower of flames 50 feet into the air, according to the neighbor who alerted the Springs Fire Department.

When firefighters arrived a short time later, they found a pillar of flames about a dozen feet high leaping upward from the ground, according to Springs Fire Department 1st Assistant Chief Brendon Prado, who directed operations at the incident over the next several hours.

The flames were emanating from the pressure relief valve on the buried tank. The valve had apparently broken and rather than only allowing a small amount of gas to escape to relieve pressure in the tank, it was allowing the propane inside to squirt into the air. Somehow that gas had ignited — Prado said it’s not clear how — and had become like a blowtorch of hissing, searing flames.

Leaks from gas tanks are not entirely uncommon. But it’s rare for one to ignite before tank technicians can shut it off. Dousing the flames was determined to perhaps not be the best course of action.

“We decided that the best course of action was to just let it burn,” Prado said. “Those tanks are under a tremendous amount of pressure, and we had service techs from the propane industry on site, and they said that if we put out the fire we could have a much bigger situation with the gas escaping into the air and spreading around the neighborhood. You had the potential for something worse. As long as it was burning, the gas was burning off as it left the tank, so at least it’s limited in how far it can spread.”

The fire was allowed to bellow for nearly four hours, while firefighters sprayed a light mist of water into the air surrounding it and onto trees and a nearby house. When the flames were finally snuffed out, gas company technicians were able to replace the faulty pressure valve and then pump all the remaining gas out of the tank

Water tanker trucks from the East Hampton Fire Department responded to the scene of the fire and the Montauk Fire Department sent a firefighting crew to standby at the Springs firehouse in case another fire call were to come in while the crews were occupied on Clinton Street.

Prado offered a word of advice to homeowners to always give their gas tanks a once-over after a delivery — as one had been made to the home just two days before Saturday’s fire — and check for the smell of gas or the sound of a leak, because tanks can be over-filled.

“They were lucky that nobody was home — it would have been very scary,” the fire chief said.

“This was a learning moment for everyone responding to this,” he added. “Everyone is looking at safety protocols for gas fires now and saying we had better fine-tune this. This was a very unique situation. It’s good to have teachable moments when nobody gets hurt.”